


Catelyn and Ned can’t catch a break (a study in having insane kids)

by AroAceMess



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Catelyn is tired of her kids, Catelyn needs a vacation, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Eloping, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Just big crackhead energy from all the kids, Lots of winter weddings, M/M, Not Beta Read, Rickon loves three things his dog his xbox and his partners, Sansa’s sex life causes an international incident, Teen and up for language, Teenage Pregnancy, ayra makes getting arrested her thing™️, mentions of Renly Loras Joffrey Lyanna stark and rhaegar, the stark children are messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 03:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AroAceMess/pseuds/AroAceMess
Summary: She won’t pretend for a second that any of her children were ever cherubic angels but the amount of curveballs her kids throw her way is actually insane.Aka the stark children are chaotic forces of nature and Catelyn just wants one peaceful child, is that too much to ask?





	Catelyn and Ned can’t catch a break (a study in having insane kids)

**Author's Note:**

> Background info  
Ages of the kiddos based off of Rickon’s age  
Jon / robb - +6  
Sansa - +4  
Arya - +3  
Bran - +2  
Rickon - 0  
(Jon was adopted as a baby catelyn knows who his parents are and treats him as her own) 
> 
> This was supposed to be done on the 5th to mark a year since I posted my first fic on here (which was also game of thrones) but I didn’t finish it in time so it’s a bit late. I tried to edit it to the best of my ability but there’s still probably some missed bits. 
> 
> Here’s like 2951 words of the stark children doing their best to drive their mother to an early grave, enjoy!

Each of he children had contributed to her rapidly greying hair in their own special, extremely stressful ways. That’s not to say she doesn’t love any of them, on the contrary she loves her kids so much it’s kind of over kill, she just wishes sometimes that the combination of stark and Tully genes didn’t contribute in such chaos. At least in her mind she can justify it coming mostly from the stark side as Jon is just as chaotic as her other kids and he doesn’t have an ounce of Tully in him (but considering his other half is Targaryen it’s a very weak argument) 

Robb was a sweet child. He had her fiery hair and his fathers fiery passion. He charmed his way up and down whatever he set his heart on and attracted people like they were flies and he was honey. She never expected in a million years to have her baby at the age of 18 to sit her down and tell her he’d gotten a girlfriend she wasn’t even aware of pregnant. It’s a lot to take in. She wakes up the next morning with three grey hairs and has to suppress the urge to scream, she’s not even 40 yet for Christ’s sake her oldest child is 12! 

The girl is called Talisa and is sweet and kind and pretty and just the sort of girl she saw her Robby falling for, the family is smitten within minutes of meeting her and it’s obvious she’s committed to Robb the baby and her education in equal measures. They graduate in the summer little Edwin stark is born in the fall and she cries in the snowy forest behind her house as she watches her eldest get married to the love of his life. All in all Robb probably has the mildest problem out of all of her children, and that’s saying something as his was a combination of teenage pregnancy and a baby born out of wedlock. 

Even though he is technically her nephew she’s treated Jon as her own since he’d been handed to her in the hospital after the bastard who will not be named relinquished parental rights to ‘preserve his image’ with the excuse that now his beloved wife was gone he simply couldn’t raise their child, and Lyanna’s will was read naming her an Ned the guardians of little Jon if she wasn’t to make it. His name is Jon snow as they can’t call him a stark or a Targaryen for a combination of his safety and legal reasons but he’s just as much her boy as Robb is. 

Jon despite being three months younger than Robb was three times more chaotic. He got into all sorts of trouble with all sorts of people had the strangest assortment of friends and a thing for dangerous redheads that went a little bit to far. His first ever relationship was with a girl called Ygritte. She was callous and brash and strong willed and Jon was instantly smitten with her, she was from Hardhome originally but her family had moved to the north when she was little. She still had the accent and the attitude of one of the free folk though and little Jon at 14 was utterly smitten. They’d broken up when they were 16 and she’d moved away it was amicable but he was still broken up about it. 

They find out he’s bi the same year she moves away when he strikes up this almost friends with benefits arrangement with a boy in his year called satin but he doesn’t have another serious relationship till college. When he and Robb move away to study she is nothing short of an emotional wreck, Jon is moving to Hardhome and Robb to Riverrun with Talisa and Edwin and it’s the first time any of her babies will be more than ten minutes away from her. She cries a lot. 

It’s in his second year of collage when him an Robb are both twenty that Jon has his major grey hair inducing event. Robb comes home more often than Jon does and Hardhome has notoriously shocking connection so news from him is extremely sparse, so it’s a shock when he manages to call her to say he’s bringing someone home for Christmas. A boyfriend someone. In the run up to them arriving she is for lack of a better word incredibly stressed, all she knows about the guy is that he’s older and eats a lot of food perhaps even more than Sansa and Sansa being insanely tall eats like a sumo wrestler who’s been starved. 

She goes with ned to the airport to pick them up. Robb and Talisa’s plane gets in ten minutes before Jon’s does so they’re all standing together with little Edwin waiting to catch a glimpse of Jon and his mystery date. They see the man with Jon from what seems like a mile off. He’s giant, at least six feet tall but probably taller, he’s got a mane of ginger hair that someone’s tried to tame by running a few braids through it to little achievement and he’s got a bushy beard which also holds a few little braids. Over all he’s one of the most intimidating men she’s ever seen. Next to her Robb let’s out a little squeak of ‘holy shit that mans huge’ and she can’t help but agree. 

Jon introduces them to Tormund Giantsbane and well if a name ever fit anyone so perfectly and he shook hers and Ned’s hands with a grip so hard it may have crushed bone. 

Over dinner she learns a few more things about the man. He’s 27 in a biker gang (‘club mom it’s a club’) and has two daughters from a wild relationship in his very early twenties which ended in the woman tragically dying who are already smitten over Jon. Arya unsurprisingly thinks he’s the coolest person she’s ever met especially after he starts talking about his bike collection and promises to let her ride one if she ever makes it to Hardhome. He eats about twice the amount of anyone at the table and cannot stop raving about how good the chicken is. Overall it is a successful dinner until Jon slips in the fact that they may or may not be engaged which sends the entire family into fits of hysterics. 

Ten minutes later her Sansa Rickon and Robb are crying on the sofa watching a recorded version of the engagement while Bran and Ned lightly threaten Tormund with a shotgun (ned) and general ability’s to make everyone feel simultaneously terrified and like they have no secrets (Bran) over the last of her bread rolls. 

They also have a winter wedding, ghost is the ring barer and Tormund’s two daughters are the flower girls. Catelyn cries, she cries even harder when the two hellion redheads proclaim her as ‘nanny cat’ in front of the entire wedding party. 

She remembers the day of sweet little Sansa’s birth like it was yesterday. She had nearly broken her, Sansa had come out nine pounds two ounces screaming like she was being killed with a head of flaming ginger hair. Catelyn had never been more happy in her life. After that Sansa grew and grew and grew, she was impossibly tall for her age always and constantly towered over the boys in her class, a fact that her first boyfriend Joffrey would never let her forget. 

She will also remember till the day she dies standing up victorious and vindicated in court and walking out with the knowledge that bastard boy would spend a good long time in juvenile detention and a restraining order in hand. They don’t talk about Joffrey or what he did to Sansa, he doesn’t deserve to be talked about. 

Understandably Sansa doesn’t have a relationship for years after that. Her first relationship after him is five years later when she is nineteen and it makes international news. It turns out the girl she had been dating, Margaery Tyrell, had been engaged to one Renly Baratheon (a marriage of convince both parties had been force into) the main hair to the Baratheon fortune and one of the three co owners of Baratheon inc. who had been having an affair with her brother Loras Tyrell the entire time. At the same time Margaery was having an affair with Sansa. In the end it works out, Margaery and Renly go and have a big cry on some talk show about the whole thing and the public sympathises with them. Margaery’s wanting a taste of power outside her oppressive family and Renly being forced into a marriage to a woman by his brothers for the sake of company image and the public practically falls at their feet. 

Renly’s brothers can’t force him out the company or take away his share of the fortune without being labels as homophobic more than they have been and tanking sales and Margaery’s parents have to be fine with hers and Loras’ relationships or face the wrath of the public. She on the other hand has a nice long talk with her daughter on the phone which starts with ‘I would like to be told about my children’s partners by my children instead of finding out about it via international incident Sansa, my poor heart can’t take it’ and ends with ‘I’m just glad you aren’t engaged or pregnant, bring that girlfriend of yours to Sunday brunch.’. Margaery is lovely Catelyn is won over. 

Ayra was born a hellion and will die a hellion. She had three black belts by the age of thirteen and could probably dissect a person with a spoon and some determination. She was a national and world champion fencer by 14 and was also an accomplished gymnast and not half bad on aerial silks. However it comes as no shock to her and ned when the northern police service call them at 3am one chilly September morning to come bail their daughter and her boyfriend out for starting a bar fight for a bar they weren’t even supposed to be in. 

Ayra doesn’t have one single main grey hair inducing event like her other kids hers is a constant low level thing that peaks every time she gets arrested for hitting a drunk man looking at her tits. She makes it her thing getting arrested. She’s arrested after she wins her first world championship fencing event on the adult circuit, when she wins her first Olympic gold for judo, at her wedding when she and Tormund (God spare the lot of them when those two are within 100 feet of each other) decide ‘oh yes racing motorbikes down a main road is a perfectly acceptable way to end a wedding’ while Jon and Gendry watch on in amused horror. Catelyn dreads to think how she’ll get herself locked up when she and Gendry (if she and Gendry) decide to have a child, it is a tradition of hers after all. 

It’s Bran’s that shocks her, and the family, the most. Bran had been a calm quiet kid even before his accident and afterwards through all the physical therapy and learning to walk again he stayed quiet and subdued. Her second to youngest son always had a bit of a scary aura about him, he always seemed to know everyone’s secrets even if they hadn’t told him. But all of his quirks just made them love him more. He was smart too, tested out a year early and was in collage by 17 studying to become a doctor himself. Calm and rational and responsible. It’s all these reasons why she lets him use his first summer break to go to the summer isles with ‘some friends’ of his. He’s 18 after all and very responsible for his age. 

This is why she’s not expecting Rickon to run into her room at 3am four weeks into Bran’s five week trip thrusting a phone in her face showing and Instagram picture of Bran and some blonde boy kissing as Rickon shrieks ‘BRAN GOT MARRIED’ once her eyes adjust she manages to read the caption on the photo. ‘It just felt right # newlyweds’. Brandon ‘motherfucking’ stark is in so much trouble. 

He doesn’t even call any of them for the last week he’s out there not her not ned not any of his siblings. The whole lot of them assemble at the airport to meet bran and his new husband. Tormund and Jon have flew in from Hardhome, Robb with a heavily pregnant Talisa and whiny Edwin had drove 16 hours to be there, Margaery and Sansa had flew in from kings landing and Arya and Gendry had paused their trip round Dorne Essos and ‘other hot places I don’t know mom’ to be there. Rickon had put on pants, they were all very proud of Rickon. 

Bran comes strolling out of baggage claim suit case in one hand husbands hand in the other in a very tacky Hawaiian shirt flamingo board shorts and dad flip flops sporting a very fetching tan and a look of pure terror in his eyes when faced with the matching looks of 14 Stark’s and Stark adjacents. He gives them a little sheepish wave and says ‘hey guys, so this is Jojen. We were dating for like a year and uhh we kinda got hitched’ his voice pitches up a little at the end as her darken a bit. ‘You are in so much trouble young man’. 

They have a proper sit down talk back at the house where Bran explains that of course the reason they got married was because they genuinely love each other, but also Jojen’s new seizure meds were not covered under his insurance but were on Bran’s and if they were married he could claim off of it and also he can move out of freshman dorms and into Jojens off campus apartment if they’re married which is another perk. She cuts him off, she mostly forgave him after the insurance comment and explains to him that yes they understand why they did it and no they aren’t mad that they’re so young Robb already had a kid by this point they are more mad that they weren’t included in the wedding. 

This leads to him having a makeup wedding again in the winter (what was it with her kids and winter weddings) which unsurprisingly brings her to tears. 

She thought maybe she’d get a break with Rickon, or at least nothing would happen for at least another couple of years. He was only 16 and one of the chillest teenagers she’d ever seen. All he seemed to be interested in was shaggydog and his Xbox. Even his coming out had been uneventful, he’d just tossed out an ‘oh yeah, I’m bi’ at dinner once and carried on texting and eating his dinner like nothing had happened. Alas still, he was a Stark and something eventually did happen.

They were having a big thanksgiving meal, the whole family was coming down, and Rickon had asked if he could invite two people along to dinner. She’d almost been a little over the top with her agreement. Rickon never brought his friends around and she was frankly getting worried he didn’t have any real life ones outside of his internet friends. 

Everyone but Rickon’s friends had arrived when the doorbell rang again and Rickon, moving faster than she thought her youngest capable of, had gone to grab the door and leads back a girl and a boy, the girl is pretty small with long brown hair and scarring over half her face and the boy is a little bit taller than Rickon and is pretty plain looking. He points at the two and then at his family ‘Shireen, Devan this is the family. Family this is my girlfriend Shireen and our boyfriend Devan.’ She takes a moment to collect herself sighing and says ‘come and sit down, Rickon only told us he was bringing friends otherwise we would’ve made the place up a bit more.’ While mentally adding a box of red hair dye to her shopping list. The small smile on Rickons face is worth it all though. 

At the end of the day she collapses into bed with ned a generous glass of wine in hand. ‘Those kids never stop surprising us, if only they’d give us a little heads up. I’m going grey. Maybe it would’ve been calmer if we’d stopped at two like a normal family.’ Her husband hums thoughtfully.

‘Aye, it might’ve been calmer, but would you change our insanely perfect gaggle of children in for anything.’ She sighs and shakes her head because she can’t even begin to imagine the dull life she’d be living without all of her children there to liven it up.

‘We do need a holiday though, we deserve one away from all the kids, I don’t know where we’d go though we seemingly have kids in every country at the moment!’ She sets down her wine glass just in time for Ned to grab her causing her to giggle like a little girl as he says.

‘True, we’ve got no one in the summer isles though. We can do a Bran run off and get hitched again with no one there to bother us.’ She nods and laughs as he attacks her again running his hands up and down her sides causing her to laugh and laugh. And maybe just for one night they can be the insane and spontaneous ones instead of their children for once.

**Author's Note:**

> All I seem to be able to write at the moment is modern au! Game of thrones shit when I should be finishing the ongoing pjo thing I have, oh well. Motivation is a bitch. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed my 4am ramblings, constructive criticism and kudos’ are always appreciated 
> 
> Have a great day/night and remember kids keep your parents in the loop


End file.
